head to head · open source
valkey vs node-redis
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars, 1,521 forks, 894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. node-redis has 17,594 stars, 1,987 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. valkey leads on adoption by 57% (27,603 vs 17,594 stars). valkey is written in C under BSD-3-Clause; node-redis is written in TypeScript under MIT. valkey has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, node-redis 11%. valkey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (redis), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| valkey | node-redis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 18K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick valkey if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick node-redis if
- You want the node-redis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and node-redis fits your workflow better
About valkey
This project was forked from the open source Redis project right before the transition to their new source available licenses. This README is just a fast quick start document. More details can be found under valkey.io What is Valkey? Valkey is a high performance data structure server that primarily serves key/value workloads. It supports a wide range of native structures and an extensible plugin system for adding new data structures and access patterns. Building Valkey using Makefile Valkey can be compiled and used on Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD. We support big endian and little endian architectures…
read the full valkey overview →
About node-redis
Node Redis node redis is a modern, high performance Redis client for Node.js. How do I Redis? Learn for free at Redis University Build faster with the Redis Launchpad Try the Redis Cloud Dive in developer tutorials Join the Redis community Work at Redis Installation Start a redis via docker: To install node redis, simply: "redis" is the "whole in one" package that includes all the other packages. If you only need a subset of the commands, you can install the individual packages. See the list below. Packages Looking for a high level library to handle object mapping? See redis om node! Usage Basic Example The same…
read the full node-redis overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Databases projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Databases field.
Frequently asked questions
Is valkey or node-redis more popular?
valkey has 27,603 GitHub stars and node-redis has 17,594. valkey has the larger community by that measure.
Are valkey and node-redis free?
Both are open source. valkey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and node-redis under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between valkey and node-redis?
valkey is written in C and node-redis in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, valkey or node-redis?
Choose valkey if you want the larger community (27,603 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose node-redis if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.